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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

We're close to getting cars that can drive themselves. We have cars that can detect when the brakes are locking and fix it, so that you never go into a skid. We have railroad locomotives that can tell when an axle is just starting to slip, and cut the power to that one axle, so that the wheels never slip even at full power on slick rails. We have jet aircraft engines that can report when a part is getting close to failure, so that it can be replaced at a soon-but-convenient time before it actually fails in flight.

Desktop computers. Laptops. Cell phones. CT scanners. The internet. The Large Hadron Collider. The Hubble Space Telescope. Progress has slowed since the 1970s? Really?

Progress in physical things has not so much slowed since the 1970s; it has gone into improving efficiency, convenience, and reliability. For example: In the 1970s, you were supposed to tune a car engine (plugs, points, timing) regularly. On my 2005, I had to do it after 100,000 miles. It used to be a great achievement to keep a car running for 100,000 miles; now it's just time for the first tuneup. For another: My 2005 is far more stable and easy to drive than what I had in the 1970s. This means I crash less often. That's progress.

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Ok, I know it might be hard to fathom, but funnily enough, every single one of the technologies you mention --without exception-- harken back in (arguably) significant and non-trivial ways to technology or fully functional prototypes already in place by the 1970s, if not earlier. I'm not making this up. Look them up and see for yourself! (Yes, even autonomous cars [1]. And ABS [2]. And X-ray computed tomography [3])

On the other hand, try make that same comparison between the 1930s with the 1970s and you would fall off your chair... Or between the 1890s and the 1930s... That's what progress used to look like, sadly [4].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_car

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-lock_braking_system

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-ray_computed_tomography

[4] http://www.cepr.org/sites/default/files/policy_insights/Poli...

Isn't that just how technology works? We've technically had the Internet since the 1960s, but it has grown and developed and changed enough that the Internet we had in the 1960s wasn't really what we'd call "the Internet" today (the world wide web). It takes a long time for anything to go from the first time someone hacked together a semi-functioning prototype to widespread adoption, especially when it's the 0 to 1 type of innovation Thiel is so fond of.

Who is to say there are no technologies that are now in their infancy that won't reach widespread adoption 40 years from now? Who is to say what's in its infancy today won't be just as impressive or groundbreaking as what was in its infancy 40 years ago?

There wasn't an "Internet" in the 1960s, or at least, not until the very end. The various components: TCP/IP networking, BGP, ethernet, ATM, protocols, Unix, etc., simply didn't exist.

There were some computers which could communicate over modems at 300 - 9600 baud or so, at distance.

The technologies which enabled the Internet were being developed in the 1960s. As of 1977, this was the entire ARPANET, about 53 nodes by my count: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Arpanet_logical_map,_march...

The real guts started filling in during the 1980s, particularly BSD Unix (with a TCP/IP stack), Perl, and by the end of the decade, the first Web server and clients.

The difference between technological developments of the latter half of the 20th century and those from 1800 - 1950, is that the former involved new sources of energy, new means of producing and distributing it, and exceptional advances in materials. From 1950 onward most major advances have been in information processing and communications, though the Green Revolution likely also counts. Nothing to sneeze at, but limited all the same: information processing lets you change how you manage matter, but the overall impact is still restricted to the theoretical maximum efficiency of those physical processes.

Faith that technology will provide us with an unlimited future is ... wishful thinking.

I imagine this depends on one's perception of "shift", but as someone who's been using the commercial Internet since the late 80's, in my view the world wide web only went through one fundamental shift - that was from static web pages to dynamic ones (CGI, at the time).

Programming tools, languages and paradigms (client side v. server side, MVC v. layered, and so on) have evolved for sure, but the WWW? Nothing fundamentally new since the early 90's when CGI made its appearance. The web works today as it did then, albeit with fatter pipes and obese page payloads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Gateway_Interface

You may like "Creating the 20th Century" by Vaclav Smil. In it, it argues that almost all big advances of the 20th century are actually based off of inventions and innovations that occurred in the 1860-1900 time period. It makes me wonder what all of our advances from 1960-2000 will create for 2040-2060?

I think one of the big reasons we haven't seen the kind of progress our predecessors had hoped for is because most people don't have the physical or mental energy. For big technological and social advancements, you need everyone (or at least most) engaged, enthusiastic and focused. Most of the world, including most citizens of the United States, are still moving up Maslow's hierarchy of needs. So yeah, you get Angry Birds instead of a Hyperloop because most people are so stressed and tired that they're just hoping for a tasty bite to eat and 5 minutes of peace. The corollary is that if we want a Hyperloop (and we do) we should be actively engaged in trying to bring everyone up that hierarchy. When every day isn't an emotional or financial crisis for so many people, we'll have the kind of progress Peter is hoping for.

That's an interesting and, I think, worthwhile point.

But consider: during the huge technological advances of the early industrial revolution, much of the attention we pay today to the basic needs of society was not there. No social safety net meant that people starved. No (or few) vaccinations meant that medical treatment was more necessary. But the lack of anesthesia, antiseptics, antibiotics, etc. made medical treatment painful, dangerous, and often useless.

Certainly poor people today have it bad. But in some ways the poor of the western world (at least) enjoy a quality of life that people in past centuries could only dream of.

So, putting that together with your argument, I wonder: could a slowdown in innovation today be due to the fact that society is expending its energy meeting people's needs? In the past, in contrast, needs were ignored, and that energy was expended on innovation.

This idea would seem to be supported by the fact that so much of the innovation of recent decades has come out of the U.S., which arguably has one of the least effective social safety nets in the western world.

EDIT. Just in case anyone is wondering: for goodness sake I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be concerned about people's needs. But if the above idea is how the world really works, then there is no point in denying it.

"EDIT. Just in case anyone is wondering: for goodness sake I'm not arguing that we shouldn't be concerned about people's needs. But if the above idea is how the world really works, then there is no point in denying it."

No no, I get your point. No need to worry.

I would add a counter-argument here though that there was definitely more time to think in the past. There was more peace of mind because people had a less hurried lifestyle. Also, things had always been bad and were getting much better relative to the past. For example, for new parents today, think of all the various concerns that are constantly hitting them from all sides. This wasn't the case 150 years ago and I think that allowed for people to devote a least some portion of their mental energy towards innovation. And if not innovation, at least towards being socially engaged in the discussion about innovation.

I imagine you're right. And quite likely part of the problem is that, paradoxically, the ability to solve problems leads to increased stress. If you can't do anything about your troubles, then you're free not to worry about them.

This is an issue that I don't see being addressed at all in the U.S. On the contrary, we see articles (rather often on HN) on how to squeeze more productivity out of those silly little bits of free time in our days.

it has gone into improving efficiency, convenience, and reliability.

This is the important bit, and it matters a lot more than some of the anecdata the original post mentioned. Commercial airliners haven't got faster than Concorde, they've got slower. They've also got smaller wingspans and less buoyancy than Howard Hughes' Spruce Goose. As impressive as the engineering accomplishments were, they optimized for the wrong goals; today's airliners might not be as interesting but they are fuel efficient, reliable and don't need to float. And regular people fly on them, regularly.

The billions that gets spent on making aero engines 1% more efficient every year might not be as glamorous as Concorde, but cheaper tickets for the general public (and satellite internet in BA1 for those senior executives rich enough to have previously considered Concorde on that route) actually delivered better outcomes.

If instead of looking at progression in maximum speeds one looks at how much people fly, we're in a phase of acceleration.

Actually there might soon be a plane mich faster than the concorde. We have mobile phones. We will soon have efficient green energy. We may have the first "star in a bottle" which I am REALLY ARRAID OF and so forth.

And anyway what's wong with incremental improvements across the board? Just look at medicine, and life expectancy!

Progress in physical things hasn't slowed since the 1970s, we just don't have the same low hanging fruit, especially in the realm of going from nothing to something.

The automobile has changed as much in the last 20 years as in the previous 100. Ubiquitous embedded computing has transformed essentially everything, especially manufacturing. Hell, there's even a new flurry of innovation in spaceflight, with a very high chance that we'll see Martian colonies in the next few decades. That alone is nothing to sneeze at.

But let me take a moment to drill down on one specific thing: pollution. In the mid-20th century pollution and abuse of the environment in the developed world was becoming a very serious, even existential problem. Ocean dumping was ubiquitous. Millions of deaths per year were occurring due to the sad state of air quality in major cities like LA, Pittsburgh, London, etc. There were disastrous individual events like the great smog of London in 1952. Many people aren't aware that that event killed more people than 9/11, that's how serious it was. It also made over 100k people seriously ill, aside from the impact it had on quality of life for people living in London in general. Since then there has been a massive uptick in the population of Los Angeles, there has been a massive increase in car ownership and total vehicle-miles driven, a massive increase in freight volumes on railroads and trucks. And yet, despite all that there has been an even more massive improvement in air quality, enabled by technological innovation.

There are many, many more amazing stories along the same lines, with the cornerstone in every case being technology developed in the late 20th century as an enabling factor.

One of the downsides of technology that works so well and so smoothly (which late 20th/early 21st century automobiles would fall in the category of) is that it can be difficult to garner the attention it deserves. Smooth functioning is the absence of problems, so it becomes too easy to simply set the baseline at the point where the technology is working (taking it for granted). But these amazing technologies (automobiles, the internet, etc.) are the product of herculean amounts of effort from an enormous number of incredibly skilled people. It should be amazing that we have handheld computers with wireless internet connectivity at broadband speeds, yet this is just the normal state of being in the developed world these days.

I agree some progress has occurred since 1970, but the pace of totally new ideas has slowed considerably. We're in the Age of Moderate Improvement.

I have often wondered what made the West so great during its golden age of innovation (and to answer what we're missing today) and think it can be attributed to a single-mindedness in our culture and leadership towards a common goal.

The Industrial Revolution (and American Revolution) would not have been possible without the overwhelmingly popular Age of Enlightenment (a cultural movement of intellectual reform that emphasized reason over tradition). Such multi-national cooperation and exchange of ideas had been previously unprecedented. The intellectuals of each country banded together because they had a common enemy (entrenched tradition, religion, and monarchy).

Similar patterns (large-scale cooperation towards a common goal) can be found in the Second Industrial Revolution, the Atomic Age, and the Space Race.

So the question remains: what singular goal(s) do we have today?

The Internet has a great deal of potential to be used as a vehicle for a new intellectual revolution that may drive a new age of progress. I've seen a few hints of this in the OSS community and Silicon Valley but so far neither have found a common goal that resonates strongly enough.

tl;dr : The want of progress is not specific enough to inspire. We need a new, overarching goal to drive the next age of progress.

To my mind, this is a side effect of the 'Capitalism, right or wrong' zeitgeist we have today. Capital markets are fantastic for allocating resources, but if you leave them to their own devices, that's all they do. They allocate resources to the entities that want them and have the means to acquire them. They coordinate action, to be sure, but they don't coordinate action in the broader sense that you're describing here. We have to hope for the Elon Musks of the world to drive progress, but while there are actually a lot of Elon Musks, most of them did not have the foresight to co-found Paypal.

Yes exactly.

Though I call into question whether or not that responsibility (to coordinate action towards the advancement of human civilization) should be left solely with our heroes. I believe this narrative will never truly change until every individual takes some share in that responsibility.

What I was getting at though, is that most individuals can't take a share in that responsibility, even if they have the ability and the desire. This is an enormous waste. Not to make light of Elon Musk's accomplishments, but it is not his intelligence and leadership ability that make him exceptional (though he is a phenomenon in both respects), but rather those traits coupled with a solid bit of seed money in the form of the Paypal sale, and getting into two industries that were poised to explode, and, frankly, some luck. You can argue the extent to which he made those industries explode, but IIRC commercial space flight was, in 2003, considered a very dumb idea to start a business around, and electric cars were something we knew were coming sooner or later, but that would remain a money loser for a long time. It took someone with a substantial fortune, and the willingness to risk losing it, to prove both of those propositions false. (And even then, in SpaceX's case, a lot of their success is due to landing NASA contracts, which I've got no problem with - but it's not capitalism.)

So, where is the Elon Musk of high-energy physics? Where is the Elon Musk of terraforming, both off-planet and on Earth to reverse climate change? What of cancer, antibiotics, longevity treatment, machine intelligence? Et cetera. These are equally important problems we face, and if we rely on 'heroes' to take them on, we might be waiting for a long time. And again, by 'heroes' I don't mean people with the ability and the intelligence and the desire to solve these problems - we have plenty of those - rather people with those qualities and the resources to truly take them on. Those are rare, indeed. Contrast Elon Musk with Notch, who are of comparable means now, yet Notch has quite clearly stated that if anything he does starts to have an impact again, he will shitcan it immediately. What a profoundly awful attitude to have. Sadly, I think you'll find more like him in that caste than Elon.

As I say, it seems like an enormous waste. Capital markets alone are not up to the task. For what it's worth, I'm not trying to subtly advocate for socialism or something either. I don't know what the solution to the problem is, but it is a problem.

You're reading my mind here. (4 AM here so please excuse any ill-formed logic)

Excellent points regarding the exceptional breadth of requirements necessary to effect change.

I don't think this precludes my earlier belief concerning individual responsibility for our collective progress. This is a conversation that everyone needs to participate in precisely because there is such a rare chance any one individual will have the necessary pre-requisites to take action.

Even the most plebian among us may one day find themselves flush with cash, and when they do, they could wield those resources responsibly. The concept of "noblesse oblige" (or, the more modern Spider-Man variant: "with great power comes great responsibility") comes into mind here. Interestingly, Elon made a veiled reference to this shared outlook in his "sinking ship" metaphor recently on Colbert.

I too was deeply troubled by Notch's attitude toward unwanted success (and more importantly, the worrying precedent it sets for others). It's disappointing that he has no apparent desire to utilize his position in a useful manner but I wonder how much of that mindset is a product of our current environment.

At the risk of sounding rather trite: the next Elon Musk might be reading this page right now.

Elon is not an island. He had to have gotten his attitudes from somewhere. Teaching kids about our shared responsibility and to dream big about real problems is an act that every adult can (and should) participate in. Those who are in a position to mentor or inspire another (even if it's a boss to an employee, VC to a founder, or friend to friend) should also take part.

I don't think your or your parent's view on Notch is at all fair or justified. His situation is much different from Musk's. Notch accidentially made a huge sum of money, and now he is weary of the attention it has brought. The fact that he said he would abandon a projects that showed promise, I take as an expression of burnout/emotional stress. He is much younger than Musk, and his success was rather abrupt.

Who knows what he may use his position for in the future? He seems to me an intelligent, honest, passionate person. Maybe he will enjoy a quiet retirement. Maybe he will go on to do incredibe things in other arenas after taking some time to step back. A little empathy is in order, in my opinion.

If you're going to look at it that way, could you not say that one of the principles of the Age of Enlightenment was that every man (and as Cosmos nicely noted, every woman, albeit more discretely) had a responsibility to explore?

Rose colored glasses of history, but I would hazard to say that the average knowledge + ambition + creativity of a person today is far lower than in the various retrospective golden ages.

... you can't find a genius and then teach him or her. You teach everyone, then genius blooms.

Yes indeed, I believe every man, woman, and child born on this planet has a responsibility to participate in its exploration and advancement.

I actually see plenty of ambition in the valley and elsewhere— ambition to be the next billion-dollar success story.

What I don't see is a lot of purpose-consciousness + ambition. It's been offered that the purpose of all for-profit companies is to make money; any venture intending to create value for anything but its shareholders is therefore a non-profit.

I think this is wrong. For-profit companies can work toward a clear, common goal without sacrificing profit. I think the modern web (which was built by contributions from hundreds of companies) is a great example of this. SpaceX and Boeing (funded jointly by NASA) working in tandem to enable private space travel is another.

There's also electric cars, which are basically already here and can't be stopped at this point. Solar panels, which have crossed the $1 per watt barrier a while ago.

I believe that relatively soon we'll have genetics-driven psychiatry and medicine. Depressed people won't automatically be prescribed SSRIs, but what is deemed most suitable based on their genetic profile. Nobody will need to ask you if you're allergic to penicillin or anaesthetics, those mistakes won't happen anymore.

Then there's deep neural networks. We now have computer programs that can recognize what's in an image more accurately than human beings. Domestic robots might well happen during our lifetime. They're going to be basic at first, but you can't stop progress.

Electric cars are 125 years old, so I'm not sure why that's new. Their sales have stalled at about 3.6% of the market.

Solar panels piece does not matter much until batteries are much better, if you want power at night or when the sun isn't full strength.

Generally when I'm shopping for a car, "it can't be stopped" is not a selling point that I'm looking for.

The technologies you mention are optimization technologies, not innovation technologies.

There's a difference between inventing the internal combustion engine, and making that engine consume 10% less fuel. Even if the latter ends up being a more challenging feat, at the end of the day it is making an improvement to something that already exists. It's a "1+n" technology, as opposed to a "0 to 1" technology.

I like this take. Last century we built many amazing bodies, this century we give them brains.

>> Desktop computers. Laptops. Cell phones. CT scanners. The internet. The Large Hadron Collider. The Hubble Space Telescope. Progress has slowed since the 1970s? Really?

A lot of these were actually invented/designed in the 70s or earlier, or are iterations of breakthrough ideas from those years. He's talking about actual breakthrough innovations.

If you're going to count stuff invented before 1970 that didn't make it to market for 20+ years, then you also have to count all the technology that is being developed today but won't be market ready for 20 years. Carbon nanotubes, nanomachines, genetically customized medicine, Turing capable AI, etc.

Of course, since we don't know which of those technologies will be viable, we mentally don't count them.

Not to mention, whatever we are doing as a society seems to have dramatically reduced the rates of crime (especially violent crime).

Banning lead paint and fuel?

Unconscionable rates of incarceration?

We're still well above the rates in the late 1950's.

We won't be getting cars that drive themselves because the future is walking and bicycles. There is not the energy. The future does not involve hundreds of millions of people bringing a ton of steel everywhere with them, self driving or electric or otherwise. There simply won't be the joules. Personally I'm excited for it.

The oil, natgas, and coal are rapidly running out. The shale/fracking thing is an accounting fraud on the verge of blowing up, if you happen to think that's a real answer. None of the outfits involved actually turn a real profit on energy production. Renewables are largely a scam based on government subsidy. Existing nuclear technologies are also a scam based on government liability indemnities. Also, the fissile material situation is pretty dicey going forward.

The techno fantasy future is going to fade away in the coming decades and we're going to confront real resource and energy limits that change our way of life to something more resembling that of our ancestors.

And yet over 3B (billion) people are below the poverty line...

EDIT:

Luckily, weapons systems are much more effective than they were in the 1970s, so I guess we will be able to fend off the poor.

EDIT2:

Look, downvote all you want...the elephant in the room is that the rewards and advances in technology are not and can not be distributed evenly. Even in a first-world nation such as the US, so many of the products listed in my parent post are out-of-reach of anyone without significant financial means. CT scans, for example--what does imaging matter if you can't afford it?

You think that the starving huddled masses are just going to sit outside the walls and go "Man, sure wish I could live there?". That's never how history has worked out, you nitwits.

The poverty rate has halved over 20 years: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/06/ec...

This is a reason to be optimistic. w00t for humanity! Also b000 to your fearful and unfounded outlook on humanity.

People are quick to downvote when it's inconvenient to their vision of the world.

What he says is true, and innovation seems to affect fewer and fewer people - the rest can only dream of it.

Good drugs are being banned, electric cars are being laughed at by people who can't fathom that an electric motor can put out the same performance as a V6, smartphones can be used as full digital assistants yet they're used for phone calls/Skype and alarms, SpaceX - what's that, etc.

Not to mention that "over 3B (billion) people are below the poverty line..." as angersock said.

Those who are lucky enough to be touched by innovation surround themselves in a bubble and dismiss everyone else.

  Those who are lucky enough to be touched by innovation 
  surround themselves in a bubble and dismiss everyone else.

Totally correct!

Despite of (political correct) statistics made by the world bank, the inequality is rising in the world. Only look at the US. Once the US had a broad middle class. Today, the middle class is shrinking more and more and is replaced by quarters for the poor and others for the rich. The only reason, that it is not seen by most people is, that they stick in their own peer-group -- and do not look to much into the lives of others. Also, there is no country in the world that has that many people in prisons ...

I think I could agree with your point if I agreed that we're slowing down. But I don't think that's going to happen. A lot of the stupefyingly awesome and expensive tech is going to miniaturize and cheapen faster than people will rise up.

Your example of a CT scan got me to think that way. I don't think it's practical to assume that such a device would be widely distributed; heck, I'm not even sure it's possible to fuel them all with liquid He if we tried to proliferate it. But I would bet anything the tech matures and branches such that the cost incrementally drops and the quality incrementally goes up. Or it leads to a breakthrough tech that supplants it (prolly more likely).

So I'm optimistic that the incremental improvements will compound faster than unrest; I think that's what's historically different now than times past - the compound improvements are taking less than a generation. We've made the jumps in tech, now to refine it to be available to all. (Cell phones are a pretty good example of this happening, I think.)

But I suppose there's no telling other than time passing. I prefer optimism, as the alternative is heartbreaking, as you note.

The poor are far better off than they were in the 1970s but that doesn't fit the narrative that things are always getting worse. If anything technology is moving too fast for regulation to keep up and any decrease in acceleration could be helpful.

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